Edward Herbert (1582 – 1648)   Edward Herbert was born at Eyton, Shropshire, on March 3, 1582. He was the eldest son of Richard Herbert (c.1554-96), Sheriff of Montgomeryshire and an MP, and Magdalen Herbert (later Lady Danvers), the patron of John Donne and other literary figures. He was largely educated at home, but as a boy he came under the tutelage of the Welsh autodidact Edward Thelwall, who apparently taught...

Edmund Wailer (1606 – 1687) Edmund Waller was a celebrated poet and wit in his lifetime, and many of his poems had long circulated in manuscript before the 1645 publication of his Poems. The first fully authorised edition was that of 1664. Edmund Waller was born on March 3, 1606 in Coleshill, Hertfordshire (now in Buckinghamshire), the eldest son of a wealthy landowner. He was educated at Eton and King’s College,...

Edgar Allen Poe (1809 – 1849) Edgar Allen Poe was born in Boston, January 19, 1809. His father, the son of a distinguished officer in the Revolutionary army, was educated for the law, but having married the beautiful English actress, Elizabeth Arnold, he abandoned law, and in company with his wife, led a wandering life on the stage. The two died within a short time of each other, leaving three children...

E.M. Forster (1879 – 1970) Edward Morgan Forster was a noted English author and critic and a member of the Bloomsbury group. He was born in London on January 1, 1871 as the son of an architect, who died before his only child was two years old. Forster attended King’s College, Cambridge (1897-1901), where he met members of the later formed Bloomsbury group. After graduating he travelled in Italy and Greece...

D.H. Lawrence (1885 – 1930) D.H Lawrence was an English novelist, story writer, critic, poet and painter, one of the greatest figures in the 20th-century English literature. Snake and How Beastly the Boingeoisie is arc probably his most anthologised poems. David Herbert Lawrence was born on September 11, 1885, in Eastwood, Nottinghamshire, central England. He was educated at Nottingham High School, to which he had won a scholarship. He worked as...

Christina (Georgina) Rossetti ( 1830 -1894 ) Christina Rossetti was born in London. Her father was the poet Gabriele Rossetti (1783-1854), professor of Italian at King’s College from 1831. He resigned in 1845 because of blindness. Christina was educated at home by her mother, Frances Polidori, a former governess. She shared her parents’ interest in poetry and was portrayed in the paintings and drawings of the Pre-Raphaelites. Christina was the model...

Charles Dickens (1812 – 1870) Charles Dickens is considered to be one of the greatest English novelists of the Victorian period. Dickens’s works arc characterised by attacks on social evils, injustice, and hypocrisy Charles Dickens was born in Land port, Hampshire on February 7, 1812. His father was a clerk in the navy pay office, who was well paid but often ended up in .financial troubles. In 1814, Dickens moved to...

Charles Darwin (1809 – 1882) Charles Darwin was a British naturalist, who revolutionised the science of biology by his demonstration of evolution by natural selection. Darwin’s on The Origin of Species By Means of Natural Selection, or The Preservation Of Favoured Races In The Struggle of Life, was published on November 24, 1859, and sold out immediately. Darwin was born in Shrewsbury on February 12, 1809. In 1827, he started theology...